FileChooserDialog

Deprecated since version 4.10: Use FileDialog instead

class FileChooserDialog(*args, **kwargs)

Superclasses: Dialog, Window, Widget, InitiallyUnowned, Object

Implemented Interfaces: Accessible, Buildable, ConstraintTarget, FileChooser, Native, Root, ShortcutManager

GtkFileChooserDialog is a dialog suitable for use with “File Open” or “File Save” commands.

https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/filechooser.png

This widget works by putting a FileChooserWidget inside a Dialog. It exposes the FileChooser interface, so you can use all of the FileChooser functions on the file chooser dialog as well as those for Dialog.

Note that GtkFileChooserDialog does not have any methods of its own. Instead, you should use the functions that work on a FileChooser.

If you want to integrate well with the platform you should use the FileChooserNative API, which will use a platform-specific dialog if available and fall back to GtkFileChooserDialog otherwise.

Typical usage

In the simplest of cases, you can the following code to use GtkFileChooserDialog to select a file for opening:

static void
on_open_response (GtkDialog *dialog,
                  int        response)
{
  if (response == GTK_RESPONSE_ACCEPT)
    {
      GtkFileChooser *chooser = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER (dialog);

      g_autoptr(GFile) file = gtk_file_chooser_get_file (chooser);

      open_file (file);
    }

  gtk_window_destroy (GTK_WINDOW (dialog));
}

  // ...
  GtkWidget *dialog;
  GtkFileChooserAction action = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER_ACTION_OPEN;

  dialog = gtk_file_chooser_dialog_new ("Open File",
                                        parent_window,
                                        action,
                                        _("_Cancel"),
                                        GTK_RESPONSE_CANCEL,
                                        _("_Open"),
                                        GTK_RESPONSE_ACCEPT,
                                        NULL);

  gtk_window_present (GTK_WINDOW (dialog));

  g_signal_connect (dialog, "response",
                    G_CALLBACK (on_open_response),
                    NULL);

To use a dialog for saving, you can use this:

static void
on_save_response (GtkDialog *dialog,
                  int        response)
{
  if (response == GTK_RESPONSE_ACCEPT)
    {
      GtkFileChooser *chooser = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER (dialog);

      g_autoptr(GFile) file = gtk_file_chooser_get_file (chooser);

      save_to_file (file);
    }

  gtk_window_destroy (GTK_WINDOW (dialog));
}

  // ...
  GtkWidget *dialog;
  GtkFileChooser *chooser;
  GtkFileChooserAction action = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER_ACTION_SAVE;

  dialog = gtk_file_chooser_dialog_new ("Save File",
                                        parent_window,
                                        action,
                                        _("_Cancel"),
                                        GTK_RESPONSE_CANCEL,
                                        _("_Save"),
                                        GTK_RESPONSE_ACCEPT,
                                        NULL);
  chooser = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER (dialog);

  if (user_edited_a_new_document)
    gtk_file_chooser_set_current_name (chooser, _("Untitled document"));
  else
    gtk_file_chooser_set_file (chooser, existing_filename);

  gtk_window_present (GTK_WINDOW (dialog));

  g_signal_connect (dialog, "response",
                    G_CALLBACK (on_save_response),
                    NULL);

Setting up a file chooser dialog

There are various cases in which you may need to use a GtkFileChooserDialog:

To select a file for opening, use OPEN.
To save a file for the first time, use SAVE, and suggest a name such as “Untitled” with set_current_name.
To save a file under a different name, use SAVE, and set the existing file with set_file.
To choose a folder instead of a filem use SELECT_FOLDER.

In general, you should only cause the file chooser to show a specific folder when it is appropriate to use set_file, i.e. when you are doing a “Save As” command and you already have a file saved somewhere.

Response Codes

GtkFileChooserDialog inherits from Dialog, so buttons that go in its action area have response codes such as ACCEPT and CANCEL. For example, you could call new as follows:

GtkWidget *dialog;
GtkFileChooserAction action = GTK_FILE_CHOOSER_ACTION_OPEN;

dialog = gtk_file_chooser_dialog_new ("Open File",
                                      parent_window,
                                      action,
                                      _("_Cancel"),
                                      GTK_RESPONSE_CANCEL,
                                      _("_Open"),
                                      GTK_RESPONSE_ACCEPT,
                                      NULL);

This will create buttons for “Cancel” and “Open” that use predefined response identifiers from ResponseType. For most dialog boxes you can use your own custom response codes rather than the ones in ResponseType, but GtkFileChooserDialog assumes that its “accept”-type action, e.g. an “Open” or “Save” button, will have one of the following response codes:

This is because GtkFileChooserDialog must intercept responses and switch to folders if appropriate, rather than letting the dialog terminate — the implementation uses these known response codes to know which responses can be blocked if appropriate.

To summarize, make sure you use a predefined response code when you use GtkFileChooserDialog to ensure proper operation.

CSS nodes

GtkFileChooserDialog has a single CSS node with the name window and style class .filechooser.